Nor were
they much the wiser at first, for I was much changed and the light in
the room shone dim, but stood perplexed, wondering who this stranger
might be.
'Mary,' I said at length, 'Mary, do you not remember me, my sister?'
Then she cried aloud, and throwing herself into my arms, she wept there
a while, as would any of us were our beloved dead suddenly to appear
before our eyes, alive and well, and her husband clasped me by the hand
and swore heartily in his amazement, as is the fashion of some men when
they are moved. But the children stood staring blankly till I called the
girl to me, who now was much what her mother had been when we parted,
and kissing her, told her that I was that uncle of whom perhaps she had
heard as dead many years ago.
Then my horse, that all this while had been forgotten, having been
caught and stabled, we went to supper and it was a strange meal to me,
and after meat I asked for tidings. Now I learned that the fortune which
my old master Fonseca had left to me came home in safety, and that it
had prospered exceedingly under Lily's care, for she had spent but very
little of it for her maintenance, looking on it always as a trust rather
than as her own. When my death seemed certain my sister Mary had entered
on her share of my possessions, however, and with it had purchased
some outlying lands in Earsham and Hedenham, and the wood and manor of
Tyndale Hall in Ditchingham and Broome.
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